[Anguirel]

Squatter, as ever supremely enjoyable prose, but it raises for me some questions about what you enjoy (feel free to regard them as impertinent):

are you pro-Sir Walter Scott? A pretty marginalised writer now but nonetheless I think a great one, whose admirers (Eliot, Tolstoy etc) more than make up for any quantity of present denigration. Of course, though, he is a serial violator of history, a prince of anachronism, a high priest of misconception

(so is Shak, but he's a) too obvious b) so famously hated by Tolk that I always feel awkward mentioning him outside the role playing forums)

I can't agree with your definition of fiction, which sounds more like propaganda. Good fiction shouldn't be agenda-led, should have little to do, primarily, with beliefs and opinions; it should be more to do with the desire to perform a skill; pleasing others, not yourself; and only pleasing yourself when you trust yourself to please others.

It's a frequent and I think really damaging fallacy that all good historical fiction is making the same claim to truth as good history. Shakespeare productions (argh I did it again, it slips out) set in 1930s Sicily aren't necessarily making a historical, so much as an aesthetic and artistic point, and a lot of historical fiction is like that, too. It doesn't mean it's all no-good lies; we've developed a little from Plato, despite what Professor Kirke says in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe; just far enough, even, to guess Plato might have been joking?

Finally, I'm interested by your stress on the importance of knowing Tolkien personally; does this mean you think the Estate loses its main card in a generation or so? (Of course this would be supported legally; I think books go out of copyright after, what is it, 65 years?)

Basically, I'm with davem in that I hate the idea of anyone hedging the freedom of the historical novel about with clearly defined rules. In fact I get more exercised about it as I think about it. We really shouldn't have super-injunctions on the past. That would be unutterably bad. It's bad enough that the Max Moseley ruling means very rich people can pulp stuff they think is written about them in the present (this recently happened to a novel by Rachel Cusk)

I ought to add that I have started to think of this little discussion as "davem at it again"...